DeLauro: get tainted meat off store shelves

Published 7:12 pm, Wednesday, June 25, 2014

U.S. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro today introduced legislation to guarantee that contaminated meat, poultry and egg products are taken off the market.

The 3rd District Democrat said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has failed to recall some tainted food because it claims it doesn't have the authority to do so under current law.

"We need federal agencies that will protect public health, not bend to the threats of deep-pocketed food producers seeking to escape regulation," DeLauro said in a statement with Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, a New York Democrat, who is the bill's co-sponsor.

They pointed out that the USDA failed to recall chicken produced by California-based Foster Farms, despite a salmonella outbreak over the past year that got more than 600 people sick and resulted in some 240 hospitalizations. This is double the amount of hospitalizations in a typical salmonella outbreak, according to DeLauro, a member of the House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee.

The proposed legislation would require the USDA to recall meat, poultry and egg products contaminated by pathogens linked to serious illness or death, or that are resistant to two or more "critically important antibiotics for human medicine," according to a statement issued by DeLauro and Slaughter.

A spokesperson for the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service said the agency plans to implement "the first-ever performance standards for salmonella in chicken parts and ground poultry later this year."

"In reality, will they use this authority as frequently as we would like? We don't know," Hirsch said.

The USDA has maintained that current law limits its ability to recall food.

But, DeLauro and Slaughter expressed belief that the USDA currently has the authority to issue such recalls and said they "strenuously object" to the department's interpretation of the law. They said their bill would "ensure there is no confusion."

They pointed out that "despite the length and severity" of the Foster Farm salmonella outbreak, "none of the company's products have been recalled by the USDA because of the legal ambiguity."

In a report last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that two million Americans get sick from antibiotic-resistant pathogens a year, resulting in about 23,000 deaths. The report labels as "serious" threats the two pathogens most commonly associated with raw poultry, salmonella and campylobacter. It predicts that serious threats "will worsen and may become urgent without ongoing public health monitoring and prevention activities."